


With Reverent Hands

by HeartOfAspen



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 19:25:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16290323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeartOfAspen/pseuds/HeartOfAspen
Summary: On Halloween night, as they are alone during the height of the Second Wizarding War, a mysterious discovery conveys Harry and Hermione back in time to the evening of Harry's parents' murder...





	With Reverent Hands

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [HalloweenHarmonyComp2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/HalloweenHarmonyComp2018) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
> Harry and Hermione discover something that takes them back in time to the night Voldemort killed Harry’s parents.

I bring you with reverent hands  
The books of my numberless dreams;  
White woman that passion has worn  
As the tide wears the dove-gray sands,  
And with heart more old than the horn  
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:  
White woman with numberless dreams,  
I bring you my passionate rhyme.  
-W.B. Yeats

~

The compressing darkness of number twelve Grimmauld Place was all-consuming. Even the flickering light offered by the old-fashioned gas lamps lining the hallways quickly diminished in the dark, so that the mold growing at the corners of the carpeting could barely be seen - but Hermione could still smell it, that was for sure. The mildewy odor of decay and neglect was pungent and stung her nostrils, even now.

Though she and Harry had been residing there for above two months, still the eerie outlines of the house-elf heads on the wall threw odd shadows up the creaking staircase that made her grip her wand tighter with unease as she ascended.

She found Harry in the drawing room, lying on the settee, allowing the snitch Dumbledore had left him to hover above his head before reaching out a hand to grasp it and pull it closer. For a moment, she only stood against the doorframe, watching as he pulled the golden ball close, released it, then reached out again. She wondered how long he had been at it.

“You’re back,” he observed.

Release. Hover. Reach.

She nodded, holding up his folded invisibility cloak, “No changes. Umbridge still appears to have the locket, and she’s still always surrounded by a multitude of Ministry officials.”

“Great,” he muttered sarcastically.

Release. Hover. Reach.

Harry was wallowing. She had seen it before. Many times.

The thing about being friends with the Boy Who Lived, was that you never knew who he was going to be, at any given moment. Most of the time, he was her best friend... and overlapping that, he was a young man coming into his own, with the capacity for far more love and compassion in his heart than your average seventeen-year-old wizard.

But sometimes, he was withdrawn - and like the moon, he would disappear completely, taking his time before becoming whole again.

Shivering in the drafty room, Hermione set the cloak down on the moldy chair by the door and made her way toward the couch where Harry was lying. She perched on the arm of it, wrapping her arms around herself as if it would help her to warm up.

Release. Hover. Reach.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

Pause. “Today is Halloween.”

She glanced over toward the calendar they had tacked to the wall, looking incredibly out of place in their melancholy surroundings. ”Yes, I suppose it is.“

Release. Hover. Reach. “That means it’s October 31.”

“Yes,” she agreed, frowning. Something in the back of Hermione’s sleep-deprived mind half-clicked, like a mostly closed door. “Right. The night your parents were killed. I’m so sorry, Harry.”

He shrugged. Release. Hover. Reach.

Death had been a constant theme in their lives for the past few years now. Ever since Sirius’s murder at the end of fifth year, followed by Ron’s about eight months ago, and Dumbledore shortly after that, the list of Harry’s friends and allies had grown short. Hermione knew he was blaming himself, and wished she could make him see that there was no blood on his hands. Besides, how was either of them to have known that the mead in Slughorn’s office had been poisoned?

Still, it had made them cautious. As had all the other deaths they had collectively weathered so far…

Deciding to occupy herself until it was time for them to sleep, Hermione pulled out _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_ . She felt as if she had read it a hundred times already - and maybe she had - but had discovered little that appeared to be of value. She opened up to _The Fountain of Fair Fortune_ and began to read…

Meanwhile, Harry had gone still; the snitch’s metallic wings had retracted, and it was resting on his chest like some kind of odd pet snoozing with its master.

Soon enough, the streetlamps on the London road outside were the only light left of the world beyond, and the sounds of trick-or-treaters going up and down the sidewalk echoed into the drawing room.

“Let’s go to bed,” Harry decided.

More than ready, Hermione closed the book of stories and looked over at him. He had sat up finally, and was pushing his glasses up his nose where they had slid down. For a moment, she only silently admired the sight of him: that thick, messy hair, black and glossy, like a raven’s wing… dominant eyebrows over soft, emerald eyes… a thin face, but one which had finally begun to fill out with his burgeoning adulthood… and the lean but strong frame... the rough hands...

It had begun with a small crush, all the way back in first year. Hermione being the precocious eleven-year-old that she had been, had read up about the wizarding world for months before she ever entered it. The name ‘Harry Potter’ had come up on more than one occasion, but when she had actually _met_ him - something about the willing kindness in those mischievous green eyes had turned her head, right from the get-go. This was only solidified when he and Ron saved her from that troll in the girls’ bathroom only two months later. Still, she was only a twelve-year-old girl - and twelve-year-old girls and eleven-year-old boys did not engage in relationships. She said nothing of the crush, to anyone.

It was far more convenient only to be friends with Harry, than to try for something more. By fourth year, he had developed feelings for Cho Chang; Hermione had only cried once when she found out. After all, there was a Tri-wizard Tournament to get Harry through, and that needed her whole focus.

By the beginning of sixth year, Hermione had known that she was deeply, irrevocably in love with Harry Potter. It had not been some great epiphany, accompanied by fireworks as she had always naively suspected such a discovery would be. Rather, it had come softly… like the warmth of a fire slowly thawing her frozen fingers...

“Hermione?”

Breaking out of her admiration of him, she offered a half-smile and apologized, “Sorry. I think I might have dozed off. I’m ready. Let’s head to bed.”

Tucking the snitch into his trouser pocket, Harry extinguished the gas lamps around the room and cast a _lumos_ to light their way up the staircase. She followed in suit and the two of them ascended toward the two bedrooms they had claimed in the dingy place.

When he reached the door of his room, Harry cast a quick look at her and murmured, “Good night, Hermione.”

“Harry - wait.”

He looked up expectantly, his hand already on the knob.

Swallowing hard, she crossed to him and reached for his shoulder. As she wrapped him in a hug, she hoped he would somehow be able to tell how sorry she was that today was the day it was, and that they were in the situation they were. For a moment, she could feel his hesitation, before those deceptively strong arms curled around her in return. For a few beats, they stood like that... before Hermione’s heart felt too close to bursting, and she had to pull away.

“Thanks,” he said sheepishly, rubbing at the back of his neck, and mussing his hair even further with the action. “I didn’t realize I needed one.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied, her voice oddly high, even to her own ears. She had just opened her mouth to say ‘good night’ when something caught her gaze: a strange, bluish light emanating from the upstairs. “Look.”

He turned to where she pointed, crossing swiftly to the stairs leading up to the third floor landing. Wand already at the ready, he peered up the stairwell and set his foot down on the first step.

“Harry, don’t!” she hissed quietly. “You don’t know what it is!”

“Exactly,” he muttered, setting off for the third floor.

Cursing his reckless bravery, Hermione raised her own wand and started after him. At the top of the stairs, she found him peering through an open door that led to the attic - the one room at Grimmauld Place they had not explored. The ambient blue light was shining even more strongly from within.

Turning to her, Harry stated, “I’m going up there. You don’t have to come.”

 _If I had a sickle for every time I’ve heard that_ , she thought. “Of course I’m coming. Just let’s be careful. We don’t know what it is.”

With a nod, he continued his ascent; Hermione followed close behind, with the stairs creaking loudly underfoot, as if protesting their very existence. The floorboards of the attic were no better. With the overwhelming stench of decay filling her nostrils and the stickiness of mildew cloying the air, Hermione took in the crowded, discombobulated attic. It looked as if Mundungus, during his purging of the Black family heirlooms, had left no stone unturned - for here was just as chaotic as some of the other rooms that had been torn apart. Broken furniture littered the floor in pieces, while a tall wardrobe and several chests had been unceremoniously disemboweled, their innards left strewn all over.

“It’s coming from that box,” Harry murmured, pointing with the hand that was not clutching his wand.

It appeared to be one of the only vessels stored up there that had remained relatively untouched. The lid had clearly been thrown off of the shallow wooden crate some time ago, but otherwise, the insides were unmolested. Hermione hovered over it, not wanting to get too close.

The crate contained five glass balls, each about the size of a large grapefruit. They had evidently not been touched in some time, as they were caked in dust and sediment from the attic’s heavy atmosphere. Nevertheless, the eerie blue glow seen from the stairwell was emanating from them. Hermione was reminded of the Hall of Prophecy from the Department of Mysteries back in fifth year - though these orbs were considerably larger.

“I think they’re prophecies,” Harry murmured, echoing her own thoughts.

 _Ah, so he did make that connection…_ She had wondered if he would, but supposed it had likely been a given, considering he probably irrevocably associated prophecies with Sirius. Even though this was technically Harry’s house now, she was sure he was always going to equate it with his godfather.

A thought for another time.

She eyed the spun-glass orbs in the crate dubiously. Nothing appeared to be happening, other than that they were faintly glowing. “Maybe… or maybe not.”

Harry bent down, reaching into the carefully packed crate and brushing aside some mothballs.

“Harry - don’t!” she tried.

But it was no use - not that it ever had been, historically. He gently lifted one of the orbs from its resting place, his fingers slipping nerve-wrackingly on the sticky dust that had accumulated from years of neglect.

For another moment, it seemed as if nothing had happened, and Hermione was about to breathe a sigh of relief, until great clouds of smoke began to billow forth from the orb, engulfing the area.

Then, the room began to tilt.

The fog was thick and caused her to choke. Her eyes were watering, her heart was pounding, and silently, she was cursing Harry’s lack of finesse when it came to sating his curiosity. Forcing her eyes open through the smog, she saw the dust from the attic was swirling around him in the orb’s eerie blue light, like an early morning mist.

All at once, the tilting ceased and the smoke began to clear. The orb still sat in Harry’s hands, despite that they were now visibly shaking from all his coughing. They appeared to be outdoors.

“Where…” coughed Hermione, “are we?”

It was immediately apparent that they were on the outskirts of a small village. The autumn leaves had mostly fallen from the trees lining the sidewalks, pooling in clusters around the bases of the streetlamps that lined the straightaway of the main road. Hermione noted a post office, a pub, and a few retail shops, all with apartments above and quaint houses in-between. At the end of the lane sat a small church with stained glass windows, throwing shadows into the light offered by the lamps.

A few parents - Muggles, she guessed, by their lack of robes - were leading their children down the walkways. The kids were dressed in costumes: a small girl with a pointed witch’s hat, and a little boy wrapped up like a mummy, among others. All were holding trick-or-treating bags.

“Well, it’s still Halloween,” Harry observed, fighting off the last of his coughing. The pulsating blue orb still sat in his hands.

Something about the scene caused Hermione to pause, however. “Why are they all frozen?”

Harry turned to her, “What?”

“Look at them,” she gestured with a wave of her hand. “None of them are moving.”

“And look,” Harry added, scrutinizing a middle-aged man that was accompanying his preteen-aged children. “This style of clothing…”

“They’re _all_ wearing out-of-date clothing,” Hermione confirmed, glancing around. She paused when her eyes fell on a car parked by the curb. “That’s an older style of automobile, too…”

Eyes flickering over to where a newspaper had been whizzing by, but had paused in mid-air, she strode purposefully toward it and tilted her head so that she could read the front page. An article across the front was discussing Egyptian political developments since the assassination of their president, Anwar Sadat, earlier that month. Hermione did not recognize the name - and that, coupled with the styles of clothing on the frozen people in the town square, and the older style of car, made it so that when her eyes glanced upward to the date in the corner of the newspaper, she was not really surprised at what she found.

_Friday, 31 October 1981._

“Hermione?”

She turned.

“This is Godric’s Hollow.” Harry was pointing to the sign on the front of the post office, which stated the name of the village in clear printing.

She could feel the color draining from her face. “It’s 1981. Halloween 1981.”

From the determined set of his face, Harry was perfectly aware what that meant. Somewhere in this village, a one-year-old version of himself was in hiding with his parents - all three of them alive. But for how long? He looked down at the orb in his hands, his dark brows furrowed, and asked, “But… we’ve stopped time? On this particular date?”

Slowly, Hermione shook her head. Her logical brain told her that this was incorrect. “We can’t have stopped time. If we had, we wouldn’t be able to see a thing, because the light photons would have frozen too, and they would not be able to hit our retinas. We would be blind.”

“How do you explain this then?” he challenged, gesturing to the frozen scene.

She thought a moment, “We must be existing _outside_ of time. We aren’t really here... we’re only spectators.”

She could practically hear the wheels of his brain turning. Finally, he deduced, “Like in the pensieve.”

Hermione, who had never actually used a pensieve before, had only Harry's stories to go on. “Perhaps.”

The two of them took another glance around. Night had fallen some time ago, and there were only a few trick-or-treaters left on the streets. If Voldemort was coming here, it would be soon.

Harry looked down at the orb in his hands, and in a clear voice told it, “I’m ready.”

As if that was what it had been waiting for this whole time, the orb’s light grew exponentially brighter, and like the flipping of a switch, everything came to life again. The trick-or-treaters and their parents started their way back to their homes, and the newspaper that had been paused in mid-air, blew away on the chill wind. A dog barked from somewhere, and a door slammed.

In shock that Harry would willingly choose to experience something like this, Hermione said nothing at first.

Almost as if on cue, a dark, cloaked figure with a hood obscuring his face seemed to slither out of the darkness between two shops. The hairs on the back of Hermione’s neck stood on end; there was no doubt in her mind as to who this mysterious figure was.

Harry made a move to follow Voldemort as he headed toward the church at the end of the street, but Hermione grabbed his arm to pause him. The jolt nearly made him drop the orb.

“Harry, you don’t have to see this,” she half-pleaded. “You don’t have to be there for it.”

The hardened look in his eye told her all she needed to know. She knew he would watch… he _had_ to. There was something that drove him to be there, an essential thing within him that made him need to witness the death of his parents, and the initial fall of Voldemort.

But Harry had always been that way. In first year, when Professor Quirrell had died, Harry had watched as the man had crumbled into pieces before his very eyes. In second year, he had carried Ginny Weasley’s body out of the Chamber of Secrets and looked on as the last tendrils of her life had slipped away. In third year, he had observed as Buckbeak had been executed, the hippogriff’s head tumbling down the hill toward Hagrid’s pumpkin patch. He had been witness to Sirius and Remus simultaneously casting the killing curse upon their old school friend, snuffing out the life of Peter Pettigrew once and for all.

He had been there when Cedric Diggory had been dispatched by Voldemort, and he had beheld Arthur Weasley’s death through a dreamlike vision, as the man had been repeatedly pierced by the poisonous fangs of Nagini. He had watched when it was Sirius disappearing beyond the veil; when it was Ron, poisoned by mead; when it had been Dumbledore, killed in cold blood by Snape… Harry had never looked away.

Now, he seemed to be at war with himself.

“Harry, _please_ listen to me - you don’t _need_ to see this,” she tried again.

But that only seemed to confirm to him that he did. “I have to, Hermione.” Without another moment’s pause, he sprinted off in the direction Voldemort had disappeared, the orb still in his hands.

It was with a somewhat manic-sounding laugh that Hermione started after him, unwilling to allow them to be divided. They might be in 1981 somehow, but in their real lives, there was a war going on - and being separated from Harry was not on her agenda.

By the time she had re-joined him, Harry was already disappearing inside the door of an unassuming, mid-sized cottage with ivy climbing up the stonework. It would have been picturesque, with its little gated garden, except for the fact that the front door was wide open and swinging slightly on its hinges.

“Lily, take Harry and go! It’s him! Go! Run! I’ll hold him off…” Even from outside, Hermione could hear the scrambling of a person fleeing the room, as a door slammed open from within and a high cackle pierced the air.

“ _Avada_ _Kedavra_!” was followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the floor…

With a whimper, Hermione forced herself to move forward, to enter the cottage. Inside, she found Harry standing at the bottom of a staircase and looking up. The body of a man that could only be James Potter was sprawled out on the steps in his dressing gown, eyes wide and glassy behind his spectacles.

Even from a quick glance, the resemblance between father and son was uncanny. They had the same messy, black hair, the same build - it could have _been_ Harry.

She had to look away; it was too close to her nightmares and waking fears. “Harry?”

He was standing, transfixed by the sight of his deceased father. Hoarsely, he said, “I was too late. I never even got to see him alive…”

Hermione was spared replying by the scream that shot through the air. It had come from upstairs, and she knew it could only be one thing, and for one reason.

Without further hesitation, and with the glowing orb still grasped firmly in his hands, Harry leapt up the staircase, over the body of his father, and disappeared onto the above landing.

“Not Harry! _Not_ _Harry_!” came the voice of Lily Potter from above. “Please - I’ll do anything…”

Following suit, Hermione hastily climbed the stairs, careful not to disturb the body lying there; even if she was a mere ghostly observer of this night, it seemed wrong somehow. Harry was at the top, standing in the doorframe of a small bedroom with his eyes fixated on the auburn-haired woman clutching a wailing child in the furthest corner of the room.

Meanwhile, Voldemort was advancing; Hermione was secretly grateful his back was to them, desirous as she was not to see his face. “Stand aside - stand aside, girl…”

And a girl she truly was. The terrified witch in the corner barely looked her twenty-one years. She screamed, “Not Harry! No!”

“ _Avada Kedavra_!”

“Aargh!” Harry cried, just as the flash of green light burst from Voldemort’s wand and blasted them all into oblivion…

Their return back to the dusty attic of Grimmauld Place was so sudden, it jolted every one of Hermione’s senses. As she tried to regain her equilibrium, simultaneously fighting the urge to retch from the unpleasantness of traveling in such a manner, she wondered if there had been some kind of accident to bring them there.

It was barely a second later that she recognized Harry’s mostly prostrate form on the ground, moaning as he clutched at his scar. The orb had fallen from his hands and had rolled away across the floor, still faintly glowing.

“Harry!” She fell to her knees beside him, though she was unsure what she could do to be of any help. “ _Harry_!”

He was breathing heavily, with sweat pouring down his head, making his unruly hair stick to the sides of his face. _No, no, no… think, Hermione!_ Her Mum and Dad had taught her what to do if ever she was around someone that had an epileptic fit. _This isn’t so different…_ she decided critically, and cleared the area of any furniture Harry could potentially bump into. Then, reaching out, she laid her hand on his shoulder in what she hoped was a comforting manner, while he rode out the rest of whatever he was going through.

Eventually, he recovered from his fit and slowly sat up, still clutching his head, his breathing shallow.

Quietly, she queried, “I thought that connection had closed…”

Harry’s eyes flickered up to hers for a moment, but it was long enough for Hermione to see, very clearly, the remnants of tears staining his face, along with the sinkhole that had opened up in his ego. It was not always visible - but it was always waiting… and Harry always fell back in, time and again. Just like every other time, her chest began to hurt in the recognition of it.

Softly, he murmured, “I think it mostly happens when _he_ loses control.”

 _He. Voldemort._ In practice, Hermione knew that fear of the name only increased fear of the thing itself… but the reality was, there was fear surrounding Voldemort no matter if she said the name or not, especially after what they had both just been through. Fear made her angry. Anger mader her defensive. She took her woven quilt of emotions and wrapped it around her like a cloak of protection. “You were supposed to be closing your mind off to that sort of thing.”

He shot her an annoyed look, wrenching his shoulder away from her hand to nurse his wounds alone. “I _know_.”

“I’m sorry,” she amended, hating herself for being the cause of that frustrated look of hurt in his eyes. “Please don’t be upset with me…”

“How could I not be?” he demanded hotly, scrubbing at his face and spearing her with another incriminating look. “After what we _just_ saw, just _experienced_ … those were my parents! It doesn’t matter that it was sixteen years ago, _we were just there_! And now you’re jumping down my throat!”

“Harry, _please_ ,” she pleaded. “I’m on your side - _I love you_.”

Silence for a moment. Her heart, already erratic, stopped entirely; it seemed as if the entire world was holding its breath at the confession she had not meant to make. There had never been a good time to admit it to him, and now was just another moment in a series of bad times. Shakily, her mind exploding over what she had just done, she raised her eyes to him to see how he was taking this most vulnerable of revelations.

But Harry only sighed, his eyes veiled, “You know I love you too, Hermione. We… we make a good team. I’m sorry I snapped at you. I don’t like these visions either.”

 _He thought I meant as friends_. She was unsure if she were disappointed or relieved, but the truth was, admitting it had been just as painfully awkward as she had always feared it might be. Deciding to drop it, she suggested, “Do you mind if we sleep in the same room tonight? I… don’t want to be alone… and I don’t think you should be, either. We can use our sleeping bags.”

Very slowly, Harry nodded. He had not stopped looking at her, as if he were inspecting the contents of her brain without her permission; she looked away, afraid he might be able to detect the truth somehow.

“Alright,” he agreed. “We can sleep in the drawing room.”

Like an old man rising from bed in the morning, he took his time standing. Hermione thought she noticed his legs were shaking as he steadied himself, so she offered her arm - which he pretended not to see. Feeling utterly deflated at this second rejection, she dropped her hand and meekly waited for him to leave first. Soon enough, she was following him back out of the attic, the glow from the mysterious orbs ebbing away into the darkness.

Near the exit, a bookshelf heavily laden with moldy volumes caught her eye - in particular, one titled _Samhain Spells & Rituals _. Was it not currently Samhain, which coincided with Halloween every year? Perhaps the book had clues as to what those horrible glass balls were, and why they had just experienced what they had?

Casting a furtive glance at Harry’s back as he descended the stairwell to the landing below, she removed the tome from the shelf. Despite her encouragement that they both get some sleep, she suspected that sleep would not come easily. Not when her pulse was still thrumming with the urgency of imminent danger, and the final words of Lily and James Potter were still echoing through her mind.

Book tucked under her arm, she followed Harry’s shadow down the stairs, and across the narrow corridor of the third floor landing. She half-expected some new terror to reveal itself, but nothing moved other than Harry and a mouse skittering around the baseboard. By the time she stepped down onto the second floor, her heart-rate had finally slowed into something resembling normal.

They set up camp in the drawing room, readying for bed without speaking. Hermione glanced up at Harry several times, but he appeared lost within the dark recesses of his own mind; she would have to talk to him about what they had just gone through, and soon. If he were allowed to dwell, it would be harder for him to move past it, in the end.

The first words he spoke were, “You can take the couch if you like, Hermione. I don’t mind the floor.”

She could feel the corners of her eyes pricking at even this, the smallest of selfless acts. After all, she had berated him for continuing to see visions, just after they had gone through… what they had gone through. She hardly felt she deserved the gentlemanly gesture. Regardless, she set her glass of water on the end table and laid her sleeping bag out on the couch. By the time she had finished, Harry was already ensconced in his own sleeping bag on the dusty carpet, and had fallen into slumber - or was being very convincing at pretending to sleep. She suspected the former; neither of them were getting much sleep these days, and he in particular appeared constantly exhausted.

Flicking her wand to douse the lights, Hermione kept a dim _lumos_ going on her wand to read by, and settled in with the moldy book she had borrowed from the attic. She found what she was looking for in chapter four of the tome...

 _‘Samhain is an observation of the end of harvest and oncoming winter as integral to life regeneration in the spring_ , she read. _Just as the old Celtic traditions hold, it is both an ending and a beginning; a celebration of the impending darkness after the light of autumn, which will re-emerge again in the spring._

_‘It is believed that the worlds of the living and the dead are merged on this day. As a spiritual sabbat, Samhain is a time for serious reflection and honoring one’s beloved dead or ancestors. One way in which this is achieved, is through the use of orbs called Paternas Aspectu._

_‘Paternas Aspectu orbs became particularly popular in pureblood households during the early 18th century as a way to honor the dead by reliving their past alongside them. However, they were very difficult to produce and fell out of popular usage less than a century later.’_

It seemed like no time at all before the book slipped from Hermione’s fingers onto her stomach, and her wand rolled to the side. Slumber claimed her, far faster than she had anticipated…

~

_She was walking along the main street of Godric’s Hollow. The golden glow of the streetlamps provided the only illumination other than the moon, which was only a celestial sliver peeking through the cloak of night. The street was empty; the cottages lining it also appeared deserted._

_Hermione’s feet appeared to be propelling her forward without her involvement, taking her along the barren road until she approached the small cemetery outside the church. For the first time, she noticed a person standing there, obscured and hooded._

_Feeling trepidation as she approached the veiled figure, her feet brought her into the gated cemetery, coming to a halt about three steps away. The unknown person was standing unnaturally still, almost as if they were not truly human. A shard of fear pressed menacingly against her heart, until he turned._

_It was Harry. She greeted him warmly, relief filling her quickly, then draining immediately away when he did not acknowledge her back. In fact, it was as if he did not see her at all…_

_A mist began to crawl across the ground, bluish and eerie, like that from the Paternas Aspectu. It was so thick, engulfing her fully, so that she nearly could not see Harry any longer, despite that he was standing right in front of her. A moment later, she was screaming; a hand had erupted from the ground and grasped her ankle._

_Kicking at the hand, which looked as if it had emerged from a grave she was standing near, she had just managed to free herself of its grasp, when another burst violently from the ground and took hold of her._

_“Help!” she cried, looking to Harry with fear in her heart._

_Harry did nothing, said nothing. But he was mutely watching her now._

_More hands began to push through the earth, their skin green and mottled with decay; the dead were returning to the realm of the living, or else they were attempting to take her with them. Heart exploding with fear, Hermione cried out for Harry’s help once more, for all the good it did. He continued only to watch her struggles without emotion._

_Crows had begun to gather in the nearby willows, and swooped down at her, pecking at her skin and flapping in her face. The mist was growing, growing…_

_Just when it had all become too much, a hand appeared before her - one belonging to a living person. A helping hand, keeping the crows and the grasping undead at bay. It was Harry._

_Finally!_

_Hermione looked up into his face, which shone like a beacon… like Cúchulainn come to life, all adorned in gold, with eyes blazing and ready for battle… Except they were Harry’s eyes. Harry’s warm, kind, familiar, emerald eyes..._

~

Breathing heavily from her nightmare, Hermione awoke with the velocity of someone who had been violently and unexpectedly struck from behind. It was the middle of the night and she tensed at the sight of a room that was not her bedroom. The shadowed ceiling was adorned with the familiar cobwebby chandelier of the drawing room, however - a recognition that allowed her to relax a little.

When she stirred, she saw that Harry was already awake and was at the window, looking out at the moon. A thin slice of night sky was visible between the heavy curtains.

“You’re up,” he observed, peering at her. The moonlight reflected off of his glasses, obscuring his eyes.

She nodded, looking down at the open book still in her hands and resting on her stomach, “I had a dream. It woke me.”

He said nothing in return and turned back to the window. With only a moment’s hesitation, she set the tome aside and wiggled out of her sleeping bag to join him.

“What was your nightmare about?”

Peeking up at him, she wondered how he had known it was a nightmare when she had only classified it as a dream. She hoped she had not been thrashing or moaning to give it away. “It was nothing. Just a bad dream.”

He nodded, looking down at her. The dull brassy light from the streetlamps outside threw deep shadows onto his face. “I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she told him.

Turning away again, he looked down at the London street below.

“Can’t sleep?” she queried.

He shook his head. “I couldn’t get out of my own head.”

 _Apparently neither could I_ , Hermione thought. It was not hard to recognize the symbolism of her nightmare, now that she was removed from it.

“Hermione?”

Raising her eyes to his again, she nearly balked. They were the same eyes from her dream - but of course they were! They belonged to Harry. They characterized him, almost on an essential level. Her breath caught, “Yes?”

He blinked, and it nearly seemed to break the spell that had settled over them. Sheepishly, he scratched the back of his neck. “I know this is… not a good time. Not with the state of things, but… when you told me that you loved me earlier…”

She sucked in a breath.

“I just… I _know_ you meant as friends… but…”

Her brain, for the first time, had been reduced to mush. Was this really happening? Was he really saying these words - to her? All this time, she had kept all evidence of her feelings locked away in a secret place of her soul, and now… this?

Seeing his face, crumpled and unsure, caused her to suffer. _Poor Harry_. He had known so little of true love, especially for a wizard with so much of it to give. But then, she supposed that having not been fed love on a silver spoon his whole life, he had learned to lick it off of knives. If there was any hope of salvaging this, she knew she would have to be direct.

“I didn’t mean as friends.”

He paused and looked at her. His eyes… and she was _drowning_ … she did not even remember moving...

Hesitantly, his lips approached hers; she could feel the heat of his breath on her mouth, waiting - almost expecting her to turn away, to reject him. But despite the circumstances, despite that there was a war going on, that they were in hiding, that they were alone, and living in a house built and maintained on decades of neglect and spilled blood - this was what she wanted. Here. Now. _No more waiting. No more hiding._ She pushed the rest of the way toward him, sealing her confirmation.

His lips were soft, and almost surprised at first. If she had been suffocating before, he was the first gasp of fresh air that would resuscitate her. The initial resistance of shock on his part quickly dissolved away, his arms curling around her shoulders and pulling her closer. Suddenly, Hermione felt less like she had been the one sinking, and more like the one doing the rescuing of a half-drowned man. She wrapped her arms around the back of his neck, trying to convey every feeling, every small iota of love she had for him, into the motion - and hoped he understood even a fraction of it.

Perhaps she had been more successful than she anticipated, because his hands tightened on her shoulders before sliding down to hug her waist. Lightly, she felt him bite down on her bottom lip, and her mouth opened instinctively, inviting him in. The moment his tongue slipped into her mouth, Hermione felt awakened, like a starburst had come into its final and most glorious radiance within her, and she never wanted it to stop.

Her hands roamed upward, carding through his hair, as if this would help sate her. But the truth was, the longer she kissed him, the more her dejection ebbed away until she was clamoring for more. Wild tremors were crackling like heat lightning down her nerves; she clung to him, the only solid thing in this dizzying new world of kissing him. The swimming giddiness was making her head spin, but he was worshipping her mouth and she was kissing him back…

When they pulled apart, it was difficult to tell exactly how long it took for Hermione to float back down to earth. It was as if she had taken one of Fred and George’s patented daydream charms at the same time that she had been hit by a mild confusion jinx… and she also knew that if that were the last time she would ever kiss Harry, she would die feeling utterly unfulfilled.

“Wow,” he murmured. His eyes were on her, observing her from behind those round spectacles, and his hands still wrapped around her waist.

“Wow,” she agreed, a hint of a smile tugging at her lips. Her arms had come to settle around the back of his neck again.

They were silent, only looking at one another. The room was still musty and damp, the outside street still melancholy and dark - but somehow, it was as if a spark of hope had given the smallest of lights to their dreary prison… and he was leaning toward her again.

“I’m glad you didn’t mean as friends,” he admitted, his voice gravelly with emotion and his face very close to hers now. For the first time in months, a small, crooked smile had bent into existence onto the corner of his mouth.

Brushing her nose against his, she reached up her fingers to play lovingly with the fringe of dark hair at the nape of his neck. “So what now?”

She felt him stiffen somewhat. “Does it matter?”

Chewing her bottom lip lightly, she answered, “You know it does, Harry. We’re in the middle of a war.”

One of his hands reached up to curl into her hair, brushing it away from her face. For a moment, she thought he was going to say nothing at all - it would not have been uncharacteristic for him - and she felt a slow, burgeoning disappointment.

“We’re in a war, yes,” he whispered. “But this is how we win it.”

When their lips met again, they tasted like every cherished promise she had nurtured in her heart, ready to be fulfilled.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my most fabulous of alpha/beta readers, I_was_BOTWP.


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